It's All Relative

by J. M. Snyder

  “I say why not now?” At my laugh, he kisses me again. “Sorry,” he sighs. “I’m just playing, you know it.” Another kiss, this one lingering. “I’m glad everything’s cool again.”

  For some reason I think he means with my dad. “Yeah,” I say, standing. I turn away from the bed and almost groan at the boxes and bags I left piled up in the far corners of the room. Maybe cleaning wasn’t such a good idea after all. “I’m just glad things worked out. You don’t know how scared I was going out there—”

  Dan’s bare foot connects with my ass. “I’m talking about with us,” he laughs.

  Slapping at his ankle, I tell him, “I knew that.”

  “Yeah, right.” He lies down on his back, stretching across the bed, arms folded behind his head as he watches me dig into the nearest bag. When I bend over to pull the bag towards me, he lets out a loud wolf whistle that I’m sure my sister heard through the closed door. This time his toes dig into my butt when he kicks out at me. “Damn, boy.”

  “Weren’t you going to help me here?” I ask. I manage to grab his ankle and try to pull him off the bed. “Or did you just want to watch?”

  He slides onto the floor with a thump, then scoots over to me, his foot still in my lap. “This wasn’t my idea,” he reminds me, but he takes the bag from me and starts to root through it. “I don’t know what to keep and what to throw away.”

  I glance into the bag—it’s full of clothes, the costumes that used to hang on the wardrobe rack until yesterday, when I took them down and folded them carefully away. The rack went out with the trash and the clothes…to be honest, I don’t know what to do with them, either. I just know I don’t want them, and Penny doesn’t, I can’t believe anyone does. What are they doing with the clothes? “Just set that one aside,” I tell him, shoving the clothes he’s pulled out back into the bag. “As long as we get things organized a bit, you know? So when we leave, there’s not too much left to do in here.”

  Dan ties the bag back up, then hefts it over his shoulder and chucks it onto the bed, out of our way. “When are we leaving?” he asks carefully.

  I hand him a box filled with magazines, Women’s Day and National Geographic and one or two issues of Playboy that we used to giggle over as kids. I’m sure Evie never knew they were back here. I think Doug bought them from Grosso’s back in his teens, the summer he showed up with a few scraggly chin hairs he called a goatee. Seeing them again makes me think of the day Stephen first kissed me and that ad in the magazine that started it all—HOT GAY SEX!! and my heart hammering in my chest as we raced back to Evie’s. When are we leaving? It’s a good question. “I don’t know.”

  “The funeral’s tomorrow,” Dan offers.

  I don’t want to think about that. “I know,” I say. It’s tomorrow, of course it is. She’s been dead since Saturday, we’ll bury her tomorrow. That’s crass, a voice in my mind whispers, a voice that sound suspiciously like my mom’s. We say passed in this family. She passed on Saturday, and the service is tomorrow. Euphemisms to make dealing with death easier on a body. Only it’s easier for me if I think of it in crude, childish terms, it makes it somehow less real. You see death on the nightly news—people don’t pass in car wrecks, they don’t pass in drive-by shootings. Color over it all you like, the reality still shines through. Aunt Evie is gone, not here, dead. The funeral’s tomorrow.

  My lover touches my arm, rubs my elbow through the sleeve of my sweater. “I know you don’t want to talk about this,” he says quietly, and he’s right, I don’t. “But last night, after you laid down? I was in the living room with everyone else because I thought you just needed to be alone—”

  “You’re so good to me,” I say, patting his knee.

  With a quick smile, he continues. “Your aunts were making plans. About tomorrow. Who sits where and what time it starts, and what to do if Jessie shows up. Is she going to?”

  “I don’t know,” I admit. Just thinking of tomorrow makes my stomach churn—adding Aunt Jessie into the picture is too much to bear. Hopefully she went straight to Morrison’s after dropping me off this morning and made her peace with her sister, she won’t have to come to the service. It occurs to me that I forgot to tell Caitlin about meeting her…well, if she’s still pissy with me later, I’ll mention it, just sort of play it off. “Oh, you’ll never guess who I ran into at Grosso’s.” If that doesn’t get her talking to me again, I can pick at Ray. He’s one common denominator we can always count on to rally together against. Whatever sympathy I felt for him earlier has evaporated, leaving behind a slimy residue that films over my emotions. I’m not mad at him anymore. Things aren’t exactly okay between us yet, but I’m not where Dan is, I’m not angry. There’s no use to it. Ray’s probably already forgotten about the whole thing himself.

  “Maybe could you call her?” Dan asks. I almost answer, who?, but he’s still talking about Jessie. “Just tell her it’s not a good idea to come by tomorrow. Or don’t you know where she’s staying?”

  “I don’t know,” I say again. I sound like a broken record, but I really don’t. I just met her today, the woman’s still a mystery to me. I suspect it wouldn’t be hard to find out where she’s at—there are only a handful of places in Sugar Creek to stay at: an EconoLodge halfway between here and Union City, the Talley-Ho Inn on the other side of town, a bed and breakfast behind the new Wawa we passed coming into town, that’s about it. As far as I know she has no friends here, no one she can stay with, and she’s probably not even staying in town at all, if none of the others know she’s here. With a confidence I don’t feel, I tell Dan, “I’m sure it’ll be okay, babe. Nobody’s going to want to make a scene.”

  He’s watching me, I can feel his gaze on my shoulders as I lean over a bag full of stuffed animals—prizes from the annual town fair, mostly, won at the Coin Toss or Ski-ball, teddy bears and kitty cats, puppy dogs with large plastic eyes, even a green alien or two, brought back to the house and proudly displayed but forgotten when we left for home. “We have to be at the funeral parlor tomorrow by eleven,” Dan is saying, and I nod but don’t look at him. Can’t he see that I’m busy? That I don’t want to talk about this right now? “I’m thinking it’ll take most of the day, you know? When Ma died, I remember the service went on forever. Everyone had something to say, and I don’t have half the relatives you do.”

  “Dan,” I sigh. “I don’t—”

  “Want to think about it,” he finishes for me, “I know. I’m just saying the whole thing will take awhile, that’s all. I don’t know when you’re thinking we’ll leave but I don’t think it’ll be tomorrow night.” He lets this sink in. The service, then the drive to the cemetery, the graveside ceremony, a reception afterwards because my family is big on getting together to eat. Finally he adds, “You’re due back at the office Thursday.”

  He’s right. I haven’t thought about work, or school—I missed two classes this week, I should’ve called my professors but I just forgot. We left my parents’ house in such a rush and it’s been nonstop ever since. Has it really only been a few days? Dan’s on leave until next Monday but I only took off part of the week. No one knows I’m up here, I never called the law firm. Three days bereavement, isn’t that what I get? Did it start Monday or the day I’m off vacation? What the hell kind of vacation is this?

  “Shit,” I murmur. My head hurts, my chest, my legs and arms and I just want to crawl into the bed now, is that too much to ask? Let someone else take care of everything for me. That’s what Dan is here for, I think, and even though I know it’s bad to pawn it all off on him, thank God he is here, that’s all I can say. What would I do without him?

  “I can call Debbie if you want,” he says. My boss, yes, he should call her. “How about we leave first thing Thursday? And I’ll tell her you’re going to be out until next week.” He doesn’t say he thinks I’ll need this coming weekend to recuperate—he doesn’t have to, I already know that.

  I nod. “Sure,” I say, and when he stands, I tug at his
pant leg until he leans down over me. “Thanks,” I whisper, giving him a kiss. He’ll call the office for me, he’ll handle it all. Tomorrow, too, he’ll get me through it. Let Jessie show up, if she has to. Dan’s here for me, I’ll survive.

  Chapter 43: Penny’s Pills

  Together we finish the back room around the same time that the sunlight peeking in through the single window takes on a golden, end of the day hue. Shadows grow like cobwebs from the boxes and bags we’ve gone through and set aside—it seems like all we did was move the mess from one side of the room to the other. But the walls are bare now, only nails and a few stray flecks of tape left from the pictures that used to hang there, and you can see the floor, it’s a light-colored, unstained wood that hid beneath a handmade rug for all these years. There’s dust in the corners, a few paperclips, some tiny pieces of torn paper, shit that will be swept up soon enough.

  Looking around the room with my hands on my hips, I’m reminded of a scene from that cartoon special I watched as a kid, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. It’s on every year. After the Grinch has been through the town, stealing the Christmas trees and presents and food, the homes he left behind looked like this—barren, picked over, dead. No more happiness in them. No memories left, no joy. I can’t believe this is what we used to call the “junk room” growing up—I can’t mesh the image in my head of a room overflowing with personality with this empty place. I can’t believe this is the same room we slept in the first night here, the one we could barely walk around in because it was packed to the seams…surely all those knick-knacks and hand-me-down clothes can’t be contained within a couple boxes, a few bags. All those memories can’t be so neatly packed away.

  A couple boxes, a few bags, and nothing I saw among them that I wanted to keep, nothing that would sit on my coffee table back home, or on a bookcase in my bedroom, and with just one look remind me of this place. Nothing at all.

  Dan calls the office for me. The people there all know him—the few nights when a case I was working on kept me at the office late, he was there, six o’clock sharp with dinner in one hand, a book in the other. After eating, he would curl up in the chair beside my desk and read quietly while I poured over legal texts and files of past cases. Every so often he’d look up and give me a smile or blow me a kiss, and somewhere on the other side of the office, I would hear someone sigh, the way young girls sigh over love scenes in the movies. Once we hired a temp to help file some of the never-ending paperwork our place seems to create, and she took an instant liking to me. A crush, childish and cute, but after the first day of her constant smiles every time I walked by, it grew old. Then I overhear her tell my boss, Debbie, that she thought I was cute. “Too bad, honey,” Debbie said, almost sympathetic.

  The temp sighed. “I knew it,” she said, shaking her head. Red curls bounced around her face like ribbons. “All the good ones are either gay or taken.”

  With a laugh, Debbie told her, “In his case, it’s both.”

  It’s Debbie who Dan manages to get on the phone now, and he tells her in quiet tones what happened. He sits on the bed while he makes the call on my cell phone because I have free long distance, and he half-turns away so I won’t overhear. Some words come through, though, select phrases that still hurt my heart—his great-aunt…up here in Pennsylvania, the western part of the state…used to spend the summer here when he was little…not really doing too well right now. That’s the understatement of the year. I’m not doing too well at all. As I move around the room, he watches me, his gaze following like the eyes of a painting that seem to look at you no matter where you stand. “He’ll be in on Monday,” he says. Not he’ll be better Monday, because in all honesty I probably won’t. But I’ll be back to work then, at least, I’ll be back home, and I can force myself back into the regularity of my normal life, I can pretend things will be okay until they finally are. Isn’t that the way we cope with death? Keep going like it didn’t happen. Keep moving to prove to ourselves that we’re still alive, even if we don’t feel like living on.

  I still don’t want to believe that she’s gone, or that this is the end of Sugar Creek for me.

  Then he calls his superior, a man I’m almost ninety percent sure knows who I really am and why one of his enlisted boys lives off post with a “friend,” but he adheres to the Army’s don’t ask, don’t tell policy and because Dan’s a good soldier, he’s never been rude to me. I’ve run into him a few times on base while I waited for Dan after TDY, and he nodded curtly at me each time. Once he even came over to the car with Dan, leaned onto my open window as my lover stowed his bags in the trunk, and laughed. “What can I do to convince you to sign up for the service, kid?” he wanted to know. “If you’re half the soldier Dan the Man is, I want you in my unit. You’re more punctual than most of the boys I’ve got under me.”

  “He’s joking,” Dan told me later, as if afraid that I might actually rush to the nearest recruitment office and enlist. “It means he’s cool with you.”

  “He knows?” I asked then, my heart quickening in my chest. I could just imagine a messy court-martial, Dan discharged, was sodomy still a viable reason to kick someone out of the Army? What would he possibly do then? The military is in his blood, he’s always dreamed of being a decorated hero—what would happen if our relationship took that dream away from him? If he thought that somehow I took it away?

  But Dan shook his head, easing my fears. “I wouldn’t say that,” he said, and his hand slipped across the space between our seats to find my knee. The weight was suddenly comforting, like a wet towel on sunburn. “I think he suspects something—he’s not stupid. I live with you, he knows that, even though I keep a room in the barracks. And you’re in the parking lot with the other guys’ wives when I come in from the field.” That made me smile, other guys’ wives. Something about the image of me the anxious military spouse makes me giddy. “When we have anything going on,” Dan continued, “ballgame, or cookout, or tickets to a show, you’re at my side. He’s not blind.”

  True. “Has he ever asked about me?” What would my lover say if he did?

  “No,” Dan said, squeezing my knee. “He’s not going to, either. You’re my roommate to him, that’s all, so don’t sweat it, Michael.” By this time we were off post, the gate growing smaller and smaller in my rearview mirror, and he dared to lean over for a tender kiss. “Don’t worry, hon. I’m not going to have to choose between you and the corps. I won’t do it.”

  One of my hands dropped from the steering wheel to cover his, my fingers slipping easily into his palm. This time he had been gone two weeks, a short stint compared to some that I had to live through, but I was glad to have him home nonetheless. “Do they really call you Dan the Man?” I laughed. When he didn’t answer, I glanced over and saw a faint blush in his cheeks. I liked that. Dan the Man. Later, after making love on the couch because neither of us could wait long enough to take it into the bedroom, and we were both exhausted from the depth of passion that shook us when we came, he cuddled up to me and I murmured it again. “Dan the Man,” with one arm around his shoulders hugging him back to me, his head resting on my other arm, my fingers stroking through the tiny stubs of his hair. “Dan my man.”

  “You know the next time one of the guys calls me that,” he said with a husky, satiated laugh, “all I’m going to be able to think about is you.” I see nothing wrong with that.

  Now I listen as he talks to his commander, whom he calls Tavitts at home but sir, yes sir over the phone. He speaks in clipped tones, much more professional than when he spoke with my supervisor, and he doesn’t smile at all as he talks. This time he just sticks to the facts—Michael’s great-aunt died, we’re in Pennsylvania, we’ll be back home Thursday night. After a few more yes sir’s, he recites my cell number, just in case someone needs to get in touch with him. “Yes sir,” he says, nodding. I glance at him as I lift a few of the bags, full of old newspapers and torn clothing and some broken ceramics that I’m going to pitch. He gives me a tight
smile and says it again, “Yes sir, I know sir, I should’ve called Monday, I’m sorry.” A heartbeat later, again. “Sir, yes sir.” He rolls his eyes and shakes his head, a grin threatening to break across the serious mask he’s wearing for this call. “A nation at war, I know, sir. Yes, yes sir.”

  I grin and he waves at me to get out of here before I make him laugh. For as long as I’ve known Dan, his squad has been on alert, whatever that means. Ready to rush overseas at a moment’s notice, I guess, and I’ll admit I did have a few sleepless nights over that at first—imagining MPs banging down our door in the middle of the night, or a phone call during dinner, a call to arms he had to respond to, me bleary-eyed and half asleep kissing him at the door for what might be the last time. In every war film I saw, the soldier’s lifeless eyes were Dan’s, staring up at an unseen sky. Every man that fell beneath a bullet was my lover, every plane shot down, every ship up in flames. It got to where I wouldn’t watch the History channel, I couldn’t, because every death was his death, and I didn’t want to deal with that. I didn’t want to admit that I could lose someone so vibrant and alive, someone I loved so much, that easily.

  Dan had no clue of what I was going through until the night we saw Saving Private Ryan—I didn’t want to, tried to come up with anything else to do, anything at all, but it was on cable and Dan hadn’t seen it yet, I couldn’t find a good enough reason to say no. And I thought I did just fine, closing my eyes during most of it, cuddling into his chest when there was fighting onscreen, getting up for drinks if it got too bad. But that night I woke crying into my pillow, my lover’s name over and over again, while he held me tight. “Michael, please,” he sighed, rocking me in his arms, terrified by my sobs. “Baby, what is it? God, tell me what’s wrong, please.”

  I didn’t know how to put my fears into words. I didn’t want to lose him, true. I didn’t want to see him become just another casualty of war. I also didn’t want him to go off and forget about me. I didn’t want him to die, and most of all I sure as hell didn’t want to learn to live without him. Oh God Jesus that scared me most of all—that he would leave me behind and somehow I’d have to find the strength on my own, I’d have to continue without him. Alone.